WORCESTER — The new president of WPI can talk about water on Mars and signs of it elsewhere in the solar system, explain meteorites and discuss the future of human space travel.

Laurie A. Leshin, 48, spent years as a leader at NASA, gave presentations about it to people including Queen Elizabeth II, is part of a Mars rover team, and happens to have an asteroid named after her (4922 Leshin).

Her own future lies between Institute Road and Salisbury Street.

After a private six-month search, Worcester Polytechnic Institute announced Tuesday that Ms. Leshin will be its 16th president and the first woman to hold the position in the university's nearly 150 year history.

Ms. Leshin, a geochemist and space scientist, has been dean of the School of Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. since 2011 and prior to that worked for NASA.

"This is my dream job," Ms. Leshin said by phone Tuesday morning. She noted the "human scale" of WPI and said, "I really, truly believe that institutions like WPI are critical to the future prosperity of our country."

Ms. Leshin was born in Boston when her father, a physician, was training, but was raised in Tempe, Ariz. She said she grew up on college campuses. When she was 9, she started going to graduate school classes with her mother, who is now a retired therapist. When Ms. Leshin was 16, she got her first job answering phones in the registrar's office at Arizona State University.

She was inspired to study space rocks after seeing pictures of the surface of Mars that NASA's Viking spacecraft sent back in the 1970s. When she was a student at Arizona State, her mother encouraged her to find female scientists to help mentor her, but Ms. Leshin didn't really try until she saw a posting for a summer internship at NASA. She walked up to the office of a female astronomer she didn't know and asked for help applying.

"She literally dropped everything," Ms. Leshin recalled. The faculty member called NASA, happened across someone she knew there and helped Ms. Leshin get the internship.

That memory still infuses how she goes about her business.

"The faculty have so much power to help students, and they love doing it, in my experience," Ms. Leshin said. "I drop everything when a student shows up at my door."

She said she is "honored and humbled" to be WPI's first female leader. "I'm all about getting every great mind to have access to the type of education that WPI provides," she said. "If I can help attract more female students and faculty… that would be great, but really, it's just a natural progression in my career."

Students at WPI were optimistic about her selection, though they weren't sure her gender will make a difference in the job she does. "We've seen that it doesn't matter whether you're a woman or not" in terms of what fields you can enter, said Jennifer Baker, a mechanical engineering major.

But with only a third of the undergraduate student body being female, a female leader might help change that ratio, said Jackie Fanning, another mechanical engineering major.

"The fact that she's done so much and she's only 48 is the more interesting thing," said Erin Heckley, a chemical engineering major.

That was biomedical engineering major Tyler Hickey's impression, too. "Her résumé was unbelievably impressive," he said. "It seems pretty exciting for the university."

Ms. Leshin will start work July 1, and she and her husband, astrophysicist Jon Morse, who also worked at NASA and RPI, will move into the WPI president's home on Drury Lane. Mr. Morse is the chief executive officer of the startup nonprofit BoldlyGo Institute, which seeks to accelerate space discovery. Ms. Leshin has two step-sons.

WPI hired search firm Spencer Stuart to help find the university's next president, and the search drew an initial pool of approximately 200 candidates.

A search committee led by Jack Mollen, executive vice president of human resources at EMC Corp., gave WPI's Board of Trustees "a handful" of finalists, according to board Chairman Warner Fletcher. "She rose above the rest," he said.

Mr. Fletcher and Interim President Philip B. Ryan both spoke of her genuineness. "It felt good talking with her," Mr. Fletcher said.

"She will be very, very strong in making everyone feel good about what they're trying to do here at WPI."

Mr. Ryan also noted her love of students and the way she engages with people.

Both men said Ms. Leshin will arrive at a time when WPI is doing well and is ready to "get to the next level," as Mr. Fletcher put it.

Earlier Tuesday, he described Ms. Leshin as having "the rare capacity to work as successfully with students and faculty as she does with the White House and Congress."

At Rensselaer, Ms. Leshin increased the research programs and pushed for interdisciplinary programs, said David L. Spooner, Rensselaer's associate dean for science for academic affairs.

"She's very easy to work with. She makes herself available and is willing to meet with anyone," Mr. Spooner said. "She tries to be as helpful and supportive as she can."

Her transition from NASA to Rensselaer was smooth, he said. "I think she's a good listener, so she's able to get a good sense of the issues relatively quickly."

Rensselaer President Shirley Ann Jackson said in a prepared statement, "I am delighted for Laurie... Rensselaer has produced many stellar leaders who hold the titles of president and provost, and now, Laurie Leshin will join them."

Ms. Leshin joined Rensselaer after spending six years as a senior leader at NASA. She joined the agency in 2005 as director of science and exploration at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. In 2008, she was promoted to deputy center director for science and technology at NASA Goddard, a role in which she was responsible for the strategy, planning and implementation of 50 earth and space flight projects. Her job also involved giving presentations about the work, including one to Queen Elizabeth II.

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